Before he opens his eyes, he knows he is not alone. Smelling incense and hearing the chanting of shinto prayers he knows he has been found out. Expecting to see the Hell Priest with his entourage of rescued animals, Furyo dreads to see a room full of malevolent shadows. The Ghost Clan surrounds him. Feeling his arm reset at the joint but firmly tied, he is surrounded by candles and esoteric markings in chalk. The Ghost Clan are black spirits but shines in pale radiance, like the two faces of the moon. Like trying to remember a dream, looking directly at the phantom priests does not give visual information, its like instinct feeling they are there and by default remembering it wrong. Little black hats of a bygone era, ceremony robes, chanting and esoteric mudras. They are preparing to spill his blood. A magus with a long thin knife is anointing his head with sacred oils before plugging the ceremonial dagger into his lungs. Furyo has no energy left to scream or fight. Like a flu where you are too weak to take off the covers that make you feel like you are boiling alive. Furyo welcomes the release.

As he readies his chest to be pierced by a swift blade, he starts to question what he is actually seeing. As he searches the ghostly eyes and oily dark aura, he sees something unexpected. The house is full of medics and police. Machiko is there and when she sees him awake, she reintroduces her self as Detective Akagi from the Organized Crime Division of the National Police Agency. She is deep cover and has infiltrated the Devil Clan. Furyo is impressed, the things this woman did to get her man is proof of a hard worker. He guesses they will have to stop sleeping together if she is trying to send him to prison. He thinks of her dead on the beach and realizes he cant trust any of his memories as it seems he is drifting between delusions and realities he can’t piece to gather which is the actual truth and where his mind is creating fantasy out of head injuries.

The medics sign off on his lack of life threatening injuries, he is in good enough condition to face the music. Being walked outside by male cops, he is loaded in Machi’s police cruiser. She doesn’t offer and explanation and he isn’t asking. Occasionally their eyes meet in the rear view mirror and her eyes are the same amused women he rolled around countless mattresses and floors with. The things they have done together and now she is a cop on a mission to take him in. He realizes she never read him charges, but not having a full grasp of Japanese legal protocol that doesn’t mean much. He thinks this could all be a trap, he remembers the stories of the Vampire Tribe that has overtaken police and politics. He wonders who she is working for, could she be a blood sucker or a triple agent? He knows spies are encouraged to use sex to compromise a target. It’s called “Honey Trapping,” but he never thought it was a lowly police tactic. He wonders if they paid her extra for all the porn star penetration she took over the coarse of their association, or if she had to be graphic about it in her report.

As if reading his mind, she asks. “You don’t trust me do you?” After years of betrayal he as learned every one may not be out to get you, but every one will disappoint you. Not out of selfish spite or narcissistic acts of sabotage, people just don’t care very much about each other and even when they understand completely a persons deep rooted wants and yearnings, there is always a pull to take food from your brothers mouth, ruin your children’s dreams or betray a lover on a whim. People have an almost gravity like urge to harm each other, slander and back stab each other. It never fails and he doesn’t feel the need to state the obvious. It’s a strange thing messing with women who are ideologically and socially the enemy. Machiko is hot enough he might have fucked her even knowing she was a cop, but the addition of feeling out smarted leaves him with a grudge that isn’t going away. He smiles thinking he ruined her for her husband, fucked up the way she will walk forever. Wonder if the Dept knows she can dislocate her hip or her lust for less than ladylike backshots.

Getting more and more agitated he finally asks… “If she isn’t dead, who were the bodies?” Machiko tells him. “We were dead, in human form. We don’t follow the same rules as humans.” He asks. “What am I charged with?” She tells him. “Rikki’s death, it’s more useful for her to remain a corpse.” He smiles and says. “Did getting your brains blown out hurt?” She doesn’t smile and glares in the mirror. “Is it true the police are vampires?” She gets an intense look and asks… “if you really want to know, I will pull over and show you.” Maybe she psyched him out or the wounds in his body make him feel vulnerable, he doesn’t press the issue. They are silent all the way back to Hiroshima where she books him into a local police station to spend the night in a secure facility before the rest of the trip to Tokyo. It was a nondescript yellow cement building with only offices showing to the street. Around back there was a tunnel bellow street level to an airlock and sally port in a secure garage. Local cops look like they are seeing a celebrity. He doesn’t have to tolerate the usual bullshit questions. Straight to the backrooms to housing.

Getting left in dark cell till midnight alone, he is awakened to switch to another cell where 3 other prisoners are already sleeping. The door is open to rest of the unit, locked in from the police side but open to a hallway adjacent cells in other 4 man tanks to darkness at the end he assumes is a shared bathroom. Furyo has been in a couple set ups and the doors between cells being left open all night and the unit devoid of cops makes him think somebody is coming to punch his ticket. Furyo finds cup full of razors and a lighter laying around so he goes into a bathroom stall and fashions a crude slicing instrument out of 2 razorblades melted onto the head of a toothbrush. Wounds don’t need to be deep, in fact its better they aren’t. If you can get 4 or 5 nice slashes to each guys head and neck, you will deprive them of several liters of blood in short order. Going from one attacker to the neck as they feel that hot flash of sharp pain and back off, begin tripping over each other. Then you slice up the inside of their bicep, tendon in legs or make sure they won’t be giving a statement verbally as the wind pipe and larynx is shallow enough to compromise with a disposable razor snapped in half.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This is a cunning weapon as it makes several rows of double cuts with a string of flesh hanging down like a tongue that is impossible to stitch up cleanly, leaving a wound that is a quarter inch wide but following a string cheese laceration in the middle that has to be removed to sew edges turns into a easy half inch wife scar the length of the face. The key to using a razor is anticipating the other guys stabbing, punching, kicking or wrestling motion. If you meditate on how they will come at you, almost like swimming you can negate their power and turn offensive threats into recoiling cowards howling for help as no one wants to get sliced across the face, lose an eye or walk around like the crypt keeper with out a nose. When applied to the face or neck it intentionally leaves a nasty scar that is far wider than a single razor attack. Causing whats called a “Buck 50,” 150 stitches in two rows. Singling out the victim for future assaults as “no good” in the world of hard core convicts and prison gangs… at least in the States. In Japan all this means is somebody is going to have their teeth showing through their cheek. Not fatal but will leave an attacker pausing to assess damage long enough for secondary attacks on knees and jaw with brutal kicks and punches to leave them involuntarily spasming on the floor. Furyo’s mind flashes back to his first time using an improvised weapon, sometime around his 17th birthday.

Either the Possessed Men or Ghost Clan has gotten word, some brainless local thugs will be sacrificial lambs as he is well versed in ambush assaults where he is outnumbered. This is the type of situation where his American killer instinct thrives. While his enemies are sitting around jacking off or playing cards waiting for a signal or arbitrary time on a clock to psych them selves up, he is analyzing the layout for the best lay an ambush. Making a double bladed Tomahawk is relatively easy, picking a place where the cops won’t break it up until its most advantageous and also where he can funnel the enemy into a kill zone to negate their numbers is his main focus. Deciding a dark bathroom in the back of the unit with high stalls and no camera is the best spot to lure the enemy, he makes sure all the inmates see him back there pacing. Seems the bad guys are procrastinating, leaving him enough time to go back in the cells and steal more items. Grabbing a stinger for heating coffee, a stack of plastic cups and a bottle of baby oil, he makes something truly evil for his encore.

Before long he is aware of the tell tale sounds of 3 inmates walking together looking for him. As he prepares to attack, he jumps on top of the toilet to get the jump on who ever is coming like lambs to the slaughter. Unlocking the latch and tensing into kill mode. He hears hushed talking as they are looking around, kicking open stalls. Hearing a big guy in the next stall, Furyo reaches over the top and pierces the eyelid of one guy and like a ninja kicks his own stall door as a face peeks in and gets a big slash from the eyebrow to the chin and the stall door pinning his neck. According to plan, Furyo can hear their knives hitting the ground, he kicks them away where only he can reach them under the sinks. With a plan in motion Furyo wraps a braided sheet around the door and into the next stall, trapping one guy’s head in the middle stall and leaping over the top into the third stall. Leaping out to make ribbons of the third guy who held back. There is no one there. Furyo rushes out to find another victim and sees a slashed inmate crawling away backwards like a cockroach, screaming and pleading. Furyo felt his spider sense go off just too late as a heavy wooden mop handle smashes him in the back of the head and from behind black mop water is thrown over his back, followed by crushing blows from the mop bucket.

Although the water is nearly boiling, this doesn’t have the desired affect. Furyo shakes it off and hits the Adam’s Apple of the guy with the mop, kicking his knee all the way backwards and cutting clean though the nose of the guy who threw the mop bucket. He took out 2 different mens eyes, caused a total of 7,200 stitches and took off a nose that was rumored to have been flushed down a toilet along with the improvised tomahawk. As the guys wail and pray for mercy like bozos, Furyo shows them his final trick. He has made three cups of boiling baby oil and careful splashes it over their faces, disfiguring them. Since no one is running in to stop him, he boils more and splashes it down their backs, on their groins and into their eyes. A sadistic glee takes over as he makes the whole housing unit listen to their screams just to be sure every one knows the King is in town. Now he is just having fun, kicking elbows and knees backwards. Knee dropping the spine and corner of the jaw over and over again. Stomping on nutsacks, breaking ankles and wrists just because he can. Certainly these fine gentlemen will spend decades in reconstructive surgery to learn how to walk and feed them selves as their injuries are intended to impact their quality of life.

By the time the cops come in Furyo has raided his attackers property bins, stuffing his face with junk food and smoking cigarettes double fisted as the attackers scream for medical attention. In all it took Furyo less than 4 minutes to disable his would be assassins for life. Using they’re own smuggled in kitchen knives to shove them into their crotch until medically speaking they have undergone a sex change. He was tempted to hack out whats left of their teeth as trophies but they’re all black and brown, no sign of gold or silver fillings or caps. Furyo spent the rest of the night in a cramped isolation cell the size of a coffin made to keep the inmate in a stress position to never be able to lay down flat, bend their neck or fully extend their legs. By the time Machiko came to get him, Furyo was half mad with hearing growling and scratching until dawn.

Machiko arrived pissed off, as the local cops were not in on her subterfuge and were crying for blood. Once again they road in silence but this time she got him breakfast of pork rice balls and American apple juice, a treat he forgot how much he loved. She didn’t even complain when after 5 minutes in the car, he had freed his hands with a plastic-polymer composite handcuff key stitched between his thumb and first finger for such occasions back in San Quentin. Furyo wonders if the Police are Vampires, they seem to not have a problem driving around during the day. Maybe Machiko is something else. A shapeshifter or Yokai? Seems she has some tricky loyalties and doesn’t totally play by the police handbook. They arrive in Tokyo in the late afternoon and instead of another Jail, she takes him to a safe house in the suburbs. Furyo watches tv until he is board and when her demeanor shuts down any more romance, he escapes from the bathroom and goes to find some thrills in the night. Defying explanation, the first time he thinks of the Devil Clan mask of the Master, its in his hand like it had been there the whole time.